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<p id="slogan">A <em>network</em> for families in British Columbia that
have <em>adopted</em> children from China.</p>

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<h2>Mixed Blessings</h2>
<img id="sidepics" src="../images/sidepics.jpg" alt="happy children">

<h3>by Jane A. Brown</h3>

<p>As my husband and I nervously paced the airport terminal, awaiting
the silver jet winging its way toward us from Korea to bring our first
child, our thoughts focused on the Future, not on the Past, with all its
sorrows. We dreamed of watching him toddle, play on our tree swing, his
Christmas stocking on the mantel, and the years of love and laughter
stretching before us. Not a thought did we give to what he was trading
in for those blessings or of those people he'd left behind.</p>

<p>Loss is a universal, human experience, so learning to cope is an
important part of developing self-identity. Only those who fail to
recognize, mourn, and heal from their losses develop pathologically by
exhibiting physical or psychological symptoms because they are
emotionally "stuck" trying to avoid or repress thoughts and feelings
instead of taking a direct route through them. They may cut themselves
off from their own feelings or from intimacy. Their ability to trust and
to love may be severely compromised. Avoiding and denying the normal
response to loss--mourning-- is not healthy or to be encouraged.</p>

<p>All of the players in the adoption triad of birth parents, adoptees,
and adoptive parents incorporate significant losses into their life
journeys. They've had losses seldom understood or acknowledged by
others. There are no rituals offered to them for mourning the ghosts of
the Past. Outsiders and often, even those of us who live within the
triad ourselves, are much more comfortable thinking/speaking of the
gains adoption has brought and minimizing or avoiding our own feelings
stemming from adoption losses. We are commended if we speak of what
we've gained and how we've put the Past safely behind, judged to be
troubled if we verbalize thoughts and feelings about how past losses
continue to impact us. Those things we've lost often hover in the
backround of our lives, in the shadows, so we try to stay with the
Present and the Future, stepping carefully around the Past. We live with
the proverbial elephant in our living rooms.</p>

<p>We've always recognized what the losses have been for birth and
adoptive parents. We have understood that birth parents have signed on
for a lifetime of living apart from the child they bore which inevitably
carries pain and sadness. We know that adoptive parents have lost a
Dream Child-- the child who might have been born to them-- even if they
are fertile or single, by choosing to adopt, at least this time around.
They lost out on sharing pregnancy, birth, and the time before placement
with their child. They lost out, too, on having contributed genetically
to who their child is and will become-- although most of us recognize
the positives also that resulted from this one!</p>

<p>We've been less clear about what adoptees lose and how that continues
to affect them. Only recently have internationally adopted adults begun
to amass and share their collective experiences to offer us a glimpse
into what the gains and losses have been. Woven through their individual
stories, the loss of three important, identity-shaping elements clearly
come across: (1)Loss of birth parents, early personal history, genetic
history, and connection to an ancestral line. (2)Loss of a cultural
connection (including language, so that if they search and find their
birth families, there is a wide chasm that is difficult or impossible to
bridge). (3) Loss of a same-race family and of being in the racial
majority.</p>

<p>Several things about adoption losses set them apart from other types.
<em>Learned</em> losses as opposed to remembered, acute ones, mean the
child will only gradually understand that she did sustain losses. I.e.,
a six-year-old may realize, suddenly, that she may <em>never</em> meet
her birth mother, at eighteen that she'll not see her graduate and
pregnant with her first child, mourn knowing what her birth mother
experienced and the inability to thank her for the gift of Life.</p>

<p>Adoption losses are ambiguous. Adoptees lose but also gain parents, a
language, and a culture. Fantasies fill in for knowing what their lives
would have been like had they not been adopted. Its therefore difficult
and confusing to recognize and acknowledge feelings that come and go as
part of a grief process. Instead, most describe a feeling that something
is missing and incomplete. Many try to push that away, hoping that if
they try not to think about it, the feelings will go away.</p>

<p>Adoption losses often become increasingly clearer and more impactful
as adoptees move toward and then cross the threshold of adulthood
reaching a crescendo in early adulthood when normally individuals
individuate (separate) from their parents and begin a new chapter in the
sculpting of their self-identity, free of parental expectations. Many
say that they never thought much about adoption or race and ethnicity
until AFTER they left home.</p>

<p>The ability to cope with intermittent feelings about the Past may
actually enhance an adoptee's ability to appreciate and value the gains
received through having been adopted. Most adult adoptees do speak
positively about adoption, even as they acknowlege that it brought extra
issues into their lives. Those who have not avoided or denied that they
HAVE sustained losses seem better equipped to handle feelings that
occasionally arise, without allowing them be the defining themes of
their lives.</p>

<h3>What can adoptive parents do to help?</h3>
<ol>
	<li>Start early to acknowledge the part of your child's life that you
	were not a part of. I.e., teach your preschooler about pregnancy and
	birth and birth parents for that is the normal stage at which children
	are naturally curious and ready to begin learning where babies come
	from. Too often, adoptive protect themselves at their children's
	expense by insisting that their child is too young, leaving their child
	unprepared for the questions and comments of others. Giving information
	early enables understanding to unfold gradually and gives clear cues
	that talking about adoption is normal and welcome in their home.</li>

	<li>Build strong family communication. Children (and their parents)
	need to be able to identify, listen for, express, and acknowledge
	feelings. Model expressing a full range of feelings. Be attuned to the
	child's feelings to understand that behavioral clues and indirect
	messages may be clues to what the child is grappling with, but can't
	articulate. This is especially true of the Middle Childhood Years
	(approximately 8 through 12's). These are LEARNED skills and they
	require practice and regular use. Parenting classes and books on
	general parenting that have chapters on reflective/active listening are
	the best means to learning effective communication skills.</li>

	<li>BOTH parents (in a two-parent family) need to be involved lest the
	child think that one parent doesn't care or understand and discussions
	need to evolve through each developmental stage, as a child's growing
	cognitive ability means that questions, thoughts, and feelings will
	expand and change. The task of initiating such discussions belongs to
	parents-- don't expect an eight year-old to continue to ask questions
	or openly confide what she is thinking and feeling as she did when she
	was four or five. How the child feels is much more important than
	whether or not there is a great deal of information about the Past to
	offer.</li>

	<li>Children benefit from making and maintaining a cultural connection
	with others who share their ethnicity. They don't have to have a
	cultural cut-off just because they've been adopted. While adoptive
	parents can honor a child's cultural origins, they can't impart a
	culture that is not theirs. A meaningful, comprehensive, and true
	acquisition of cultural identity or even minimal comfort with people
	who live the original culture can come only through the child building
	relationships and engaging in culture-rich experiences within his
	ethnic group. Regular, ongoing, direct contact and a personal,
	meaningful relationship with an adult or family who shares the child's
	ethnicity is a MUST if children are to be prevented from integrating
	negative stereotypes and instead, are to be helped to develop pride in
	their heritage. <br />
	Celebrating with other adoptive families is not enough and may actually
	cause a child to reject his cultural heritage by exaggerating
	differences. Heritage Camps are wonderful for connecting young adoptees
	with their peers and older adoptees who can provide role modeling and
	mentoring, but they are not substitutes for direct involvement in an
	ethnic community.</li>

	<li>We live in a race-conscious society in which people of color are
	often stereotyped, kept separate, and discriminated against, even
	though the latter is illegal. Although we are extremely focused on
	race, we, as a society fiercely cling to the delusion that we value
	diversity. Having Caucasian adoptive parents (if that is the case) does
	not shield a child from any of that. As parents, we must help our child
	acquire an accurate and healthy racial identity-- to take pride in who
	he is and not be poisoned by the pervasive racism which afflicts our
	society. The process can't wait until a child is about to go off to
	school or until after he's been on the receiving end of racial
	teasing--it needs to start when a child is in the cradle. How we
	interact with others of color and to what extent, whether we actively
	demonstrate that we value differences among people, and whether we
	speak up when we see racial prejudice or stereotyping are ways that we
	help or hinder our child's racial identity development. Our children
	need adult role models who can provide them with a road map for how to
	live life as a person of color in a racially-aware society that does
	not always value differences. They also need to be armed to respond to
	those who tie racial teasing to taunts about adoptive family membership
	and won't be, if families don't openly discuss societal tendencies to
	put people on a racial ruler and why that is wrong and self-limiting.</li>

	<li>Understand that although children in the middle childhood stage
	(8-12's) often deny thinking or wondering about birth parents, most do
	on a regular basis. Many adult adoptees tell us that being adopted was
	like living with an elephant in the living room, at that age! As
	parents, know that it is YOUR job to occasionally raise the topic of
	adoption in a matter-of-fact way so that you add to your child's body
	knowledge. Try to pick up on indirect clues and acknowledge them, even
	if your child denies any interest. Ambivalence is normal, at this age
	("I want to know more/talk-- I don't").</li>
</ol>

<p>What parents can learn from the lessons the adult adoptees provide is
that our children are on a lifelong journey of exploring what it means
to have been transracially, transculturally adopted and that we can
accompany them for only a part of that journey. We can either help or
hinder them along the way, depending on whether we have the courage to
help them face the issues they'll grapple with or instead enable them to
suppress, deny, and hide the fact that those issues exist so that they
may proceed on a pathological trajectory. We don't get to choose whether
or not having been adopted will impact children-- only whether we'll
help them build skills that will better equip them to cope with the
impact, perhaps even benefit from it and have a healthy life.</p>

<p>No adoptive parent can take on the specialized tasks of raising a
child after adoption and do a perfect job, however. We don't owe our
children perfect childhoods thank goodness, for that would be impossible
to deliver! Nor do we have to get the job done within a set period of
time. By finding balance, parents can try to insure that our child will
grow up having had a satisfying and enriching childhood, able to put the
Past into perspective. A major part of that is helping children embrace
the losses and gains in adoption, so that they get woven into the
tapestry of their lives, adding complexity and richness. Parents also
most learn how to let go-- to gradually give over the responsibility for
this to their children, once they've given opportunities for
understanding and coping with adoption issues. Regardless of the
consequences adoptees may bear if they choose NOT to straightforwardly
go about dealing with those issues, adoptive parents must step back and
respect their son or daughter's choice, knowing that life is long and at
a later time, he or she may be more ready to deal with adoption issues.</p>

<p>Our first child grew to be a youth and then a young man who tends to
be fairly private and does not easily share his thoughts and feelings.
Months can go by without his discussing adoption-related topics.
Recently, he fell in love and one day, I heard his beloved ask him about
looking at his baby book. She asked questions that he could not answer.
Since then, he's been asking questions, verbalizing thoughts and
feelings that have been on his mind and in his heart for a very long
time, but had been buried. His love for her was the trigger for him to
push past those feelings to his greater need to know.</p>

<p>If there is a lesson in this, it is this: that our role does not end
when our children reach the magical age of eighteen. Nor do their
thoughts, feelings, questions, and yearnings end with childhood. To be
an adoptee is to live with and hopefully embrace the gains and losses
inextricably intertwined in having been adopted. To be an effective
adoptive parent is to provide the tools so that our sons and daughters
CAN embrace all this and incorporate it when they awaken to that need--
whenever it comes, knowing that the mourning for pieces of themselves
lost in an unknown, unrecoverable past can and ultimately will sweeten
what is and is yet to be.</p>

<p>Go back to the <a href="index.htm">Jane Brown archive</a>.</p>

<p class="fineprint">This article is the sole property of Jane Brown and
is copyrighted. It MUST not be copied, reprinted or published in any
form in whole or in part without the express written consent of Jane
Brown.</p>

<p class="fineprint">Jane Brown is both an adoption social
worker/educator and an adoptive &amp; foster mother of nine children,
some of whom are now grown. She lives and works in Arizona. She serves
on the editorial board of Adoptive Families Magazine and writes a
regular parenting column for the publication. She is the creator of
Adoptive Playshops which is a series of workshops for adopted children
age five+, their non-adopted siblings, and adoptive parents in which
children are helped through playful, multisensory activities to explore
growing up in an adoptive family and racial identity, plus develop
skills for dealing with societal attitudes and beliefs about adoption
and includes helping children resist and confront racism and bullying.
She can be reached at: janebrown77@earthlink.net or at: (602) 690-5338.</p>
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